SCCM Tips. Fixes and Guides

SCCM Standalone Boot Media Creation

ConfigMgr allows you to create stand-alone bootable media that can be used in situations where there isn’t any network access. It’s pretty simple to do so here’s a breakdown of that process.

Note that before you start that ‘the following actions are not supported for stand-alone media:

The Auto Apply Drivers step in the task sequence. Automatic application of device drivers from the driver catalog is not supported, but you can choose the Apply Driver Package step to make a specified set of drivers available to Windows Setup.

The Download Package Content step in the task sequence. The management point information is not available on stand-alone media, therefore the step will fail trying to enumerate content locations.

Installing software updates.

Installing software before deploying the operating system.

Task sequences for non-operating system deployments.

Associating users with the destination computer to support user device affinity.

You should also make sure that all the content that you wish to add to the stand-alone media is uploaded to at least one of the DP’s you are going to use to as the source for your media.

Start off by going into the Software Library workspace and navigating to Operating Systems. Right click on Task Sequences and select Create Task Sequence Media.

Now choose the Stand-alone media option and click Next.

From the CD/DVD set drop down I’m going to choose 8.5GB media. My Task Sequence won’t be beyond this size. If it was then the file will be split accordingly so you can burn or copy to multiple disks. Once selected click the Browse button.

Save the ISO off to a relevant folder.

Click Next.

It’s advisable to create a password for the boot media. Enter a password and confirm then click Next.

Click Browse to select a Task Sequence to offline to the media.

Select the Task Sequence and click OK.

All Task Sequence dependencies will be collected. Once they are populated click Next.

The next window will show a list of all Distribution Points and list the amount of packages on each. These can then be added for downloading the content to the media. In my case I have the one DP that has all the packages available on it. Select the DP and click Add.

Click Next once the DP is added.

Add in any required Task Sequence variables or pre-start commands at this stage and click Next.

Click Next.

The process to create the media will begin.

Click Close when complete.

When it comes to creating a bootable USB stick that contains the ISO content, I recommend that you download a copy of Rufus from here. This product will allow you to create both BIOS and UEFI based media.

Really helpful. Could you please post on limitations on ADK 1511 / ADK 1607 upgrades. We have couple of issues in my current organization where we are unable to modify the existing boot images post upgrade of 1607 due to which we have rolled back that change. (This issue is highlighted by MS it self) Couldn’t understand much out of it. Anyway that you can give me some information on that ?